Girl Missing, #1 Read online

  Girl Missing

  A Detective Kaitlyn Carr Mystery

  Kate Gable

  Byrd Books LLC

  Contents

  Copyright

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  About Kate Gable

  Also by Kate Gable

  About Girl Missing

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

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  Copyright

  Copyright © 2021 by Byrd Books, LLC.

  All rights reserved.

  Proofreaders:

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  Cover Design: Kate Gable

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a word of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

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  About Kate Gable

  Kate Gable loves a good mystery that is full of suspense. She grew up devouring psychological thrillers and crime novels as well as movies, tv shows and true crime.

  Her favorite stories are the ones that are centered on families with lots of secrets and lies as well as many twists and turns. Her novels have elements of psychological suspense, thriller, mystery and romance.

  Kate Gable lives in Southern California with her husband, son, a dog and a cat. She has spent more than twenty years in this area and finds inspiration from its cities, canyons, deserts, and small mountain towns.

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  Also by Kate Gable

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  Girl Missing (Book 1)

  * * *

  Girl Lost (Book 2)

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  Girl Found (Book 3)

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  Girl Hidden (FREE Novella)

  About Girl Missing

  Don’t lie to me…

  A young girl from a wealthy family is found hanging from a tree in a secluded canyon.

  What was she doing there in the middle of the night? How did she get there? Who did this to her? Detective Kaitlyn Carr is determined to find out and bring the killer to justice.

  But when her thirteen-year-old sister vanishes on her way back from a friend’s house, Kaitlyn must split her time and confront demons from her own past in order to bring her sister home.

  The small mountain town of Big Bear Lake is only three hours away but a world away from her life in Los Angeles. It’s the place she grew up and the place that’s plagued her with lies, death and secrets.

  As Kaitlyn digs deeper into both cases, she finds out that appearances are misleading and few things are what they seem.

  A murderer is lurking in the shadows and the more of the mystery that Kaitlyn unspools the closer she gets to danger herself.

  Can Kaitlyn find the killer and solve the mystery of her sister’s disappearance before it’s too late?

  What happens when someone else is taken?

  * * *

  Girl Missing is a suspenseful thriller filled for fans of A. J. Rivers, Mary Stone, Willow Rose, James Patterson, Melinda Leigh, Kendra Elliot, Ella Gray, and Karin Slaughter. It has mystery, angst, a bit of romance and family drama.

  1

  I should not be here. I make my way down the uneven terrain, careful not to twist my ankle. Officers are already gathered at the front, securing the crime scene. Tape has been put up. Out in the distance, the full moon hovers over me, an ominous sign of what I'm about to uncover.

  Dispatch provided me with the basic facts, but it’s my job to put together the story, not just the story, the truth.

  A dog walker found a young girl hanging from a tree and cut her down in hopes of resuscitating her.

  I approach the scene swiftly, but carefully. The morning run that I took hours ago is now catching up with me. I've been meaning to get into better shape for the last few years, starting and stopping various exercise regimes.

  This week I have made a commitment. This is my third day in a row, the longest that I have stuck with it. As a result, my calves are tight and it feels like I’m lifting cement blocks with each step.

  The girl’s body is located up a steep hill, just around an enormous granite boulder. I step over rocks, slipping slightly on the gravel. I am careful to avoid touching the bulging roots of the pine tree as I struggle to the crime scene.

  I introduce myself and flash my badge. The officer who was the first to arrive on the scene gives me a slight nod and shows me the body.

  The pine trees in these parts don't have too many low hanging branches and this one is almost ten feet off the ground. The rope is tied tightly to it and I see the spot where the dog walker cut her down.

  The thick white rope is frayed at the ends. I follow the trajectory of how she would have fallen and I see her lying flat on her back, eyes open staring up.

  Her hair is matted, but at one point it had been a beautiful flaxen blonde. Her eyes have winged eyeliner and perfectly applied eyelashes. The lipstick around her mouth is smeared, but it doesn'
t look like she had been crying.

  The crime scene technicians are already gathering evidence and I stand a little bit back examining everything from a distance.

  “So, you are the one who found her?" I ask, turning to Keith Upton, a doughy man with pink cheeks and a receding hairline.

  He's desperately trying to hold onto his beagle, who is barking nonstop at every single person walking by. I take a few steps closer to them, kneel down, and give the dog my hands to sniff.

  “Wow, my dog doesn't like anyone,” Keith says.

  "Tell me how you found her,” I ask, pulling out a small notebook and a pen.

  “Well,” he hesitates, “I was walking right here like we always do. Lucky needs a lot of exercise so that he doesn't destroy everything in the house. He's only a puppy, you know.”

  “Uh-huh.” I nod.

  “I usually like to go on a hike right behind my house on the Willow Creek trail.”

  “Yes.” I nod. “What was different about today?”

  "I don't know. I was talking on the phone with my brother-in-law and we got into a really heated political discussion. I needed to blow off some steam. I just don't get it, you know. How can any people vote for people like that?”

  "So, that's why you ended up coming here?” I ask, trying to steer him back on track.

  “Yes, there's a trail right over there. I know that dogs aren't allowed off the leash here, but there was no one around and she needed the exercise. So, I threw the ball a couple of times up the hill away from the trail and then it got lost. She came back without it. I told her to go look. I didn't really want to leave the trail, but she couldn’t find it and it was the last one I had.”

  “And?” I ask.

  I'm tempted to fill in the blank and just say, “So, that’s how you found her?” but I don't want to put words in his mouth.

  All of these details seem mundane, but cases are solved in the weeds. I need to know everything that Keith can remember because I don’t know what the clue will be that helps me find out the truth.

  “I left the trail and let Lucky lead me over to where I thought I’d thrown the ball. That's when I saw her.” He gasps and gets choked up. “Just hanging there. Swaying in the wind. Her body was so small, she practically looked like a scarecrow. God, I shouldn’t have said that. That's awful.”

  "No, details like that are important. I want to be able to see what you saw.”

  Then suddenly, the strong, confident façade of this nonchalant man breaks down. He turns away from me to hide the tears streaming from his eyes.

  “It's okay," I say calmly, touching him lightly on the arm. “It's going to be okay.”

  “I've never seen a dead body before,” he says, and this actually catches me by surprise. He must be at least in his fifties. Hasn't he ever been to a funeral?

  “I've never even been to a funeral. I guess I'm lucky that way. I've never had much family, but my parents are still around, healthy, and I don't know anyone who has died since my grandparents did when I was a baby.”

  I continue to pat his forearm, trying to figure out a way to steer this conversation back on course. So far, I have found out way too much information about the man who found the dead girl, but not so much about the dead girl herself.

  “I cut her down," Keith suddenly says, his voice cracking. “I thought that maybe she was still breathing, like maybe I could save her, but I should have looked closer. I should've seen how cold she was.”

  He shakes his head and starts to rock his body from side to side. It’s a common thing for people who want to soothe themselves.

  “Why did you have a knife?” I ask.

  “I always carry one with me in my bag. When we go on long walks like this, one or two hours, my blood sugar drops and I will bring an apple or an orange as a backup, but I don't like biting into apples. I prefer to cut them into slices.”

  He opens his bag and pulls one out.

  “We will have to take it as evidence,” I say.

  “The apple?” He gasps.

  I almost laugh.

  “No, the knife and the bag.”

  “Oh, yes, of course. When will I get it back?”

  “I'm not exactly sure. It will really depend on how this case proceeds, but I wouldn’t expect it back anytime soon.”

  I don't ask him any more questions, for now. Instead, I walk around the scene, taking it all in. It's not very late in the afternoon, but the sun is already setting. The mountains around here are tall, casting long shadows over the valley. It's winter, after all.

  “Detective Carr.” An eager young deputy approaches me. He has to be in his early twenties at the most, but he looks like a kid of fifteen dressed like a cop for Halloween.

  "There's something else here,” he says as I read the shiny, polished name tag on his chest.

  Officer Gary Lenore’s uniform is freshly pressed and his shoes continue to shine as if they have just been polished, despite all of the dust on the trail. We all know how uncomfortable those dress shoes can be and I'm pleased that I haven't heard him complain about it once, not even to his friend.

  Lenore leads me over around the tree where an extensive root structure is peeking out of the ground. The towering pine with its reddish trunk looks like it's about to tip over at any moment, but it continues to stand and probably will still be here long after we’re all gone.

  Lenore points to something on the ground and I lean in for a closer look. It's a couple of twenties folded in half that look like they have just fallen out of someone’s pocket.

  The photographer comes over to document what we have found and the crime technician places them into an evidence bag. I take my own picture with my phone, for personal record keeping.

  I walk back around to the girl. No one has moved her. Luckily, no one draped anything over her body and contaminated the scene either.

  You’d think that given what we all know from watching endless CSI shows no one would make a mistake like that anymore, let alone people who work in police departments, but we had someone do just that exact same thing to a victim out in Victorville last year.

  The covering of the body tends to happen more often in cases when the victim is female and nude.

  In this case, the girl is dressed in plaid pajama pants and an oversized t-shirt, something you’d wear at home or perhaps to go to bed. The evenings have gotten quite cool with temperatures dipping down into the low 50s, but there is no jacket.

  Another thing that stands out are her flip-flops. Bright pink, plastic, resembling a thong, separating her big toe from the rest of the foot. Her toenails are painted turquoise, a very neat job, not the way that I used to paint my nails when I was a kid. There's a good possibility that they were done professionally, whether or not this has anything to do with the case, I have no idea.

  “You see the flip-flops.” I turn to Lenore.

  He nods, eager to learn.

  “Well, it has been in the 70s during the day, but it’s too cold for them now, right? Besides, who would choose that to wear on a hike to commit suicide?”

  He nods, but he doesn't seem convinced.

  "You don't agree?” I ask.

  “No, you're probably right. What do I know?” He shrugs.

  "Tell me," I say. "Tell me what you're thinking.”

  I have never been one of those cops whose opinion couldn’t be challenged. In fact, I welcome it. I'm not a pushover, but I also know that I don't know everything.

  I've also known many bad detectives who come onto a scene and make a snap judgement right away and go out of their way to collect evidence that proves them right. I don’t plan on going down that rabbit hole.

  No, you have to approach every scene with an open mind and an open heart. Anything could have happened. The victim can’t tell you the truth, but the evidence can and I’m not just talking about DNA. There are other details: how the victim’s clothing is arranged, the position of the body, and in this case, how the rope is tied.

 
“So, the thing about the flip-flops is that she could have worn them because some girls tend to do that,” Lenore says. “My little sister is obsessed. She wears them all the time. It hardly matters what the weather is so, unless it drops down into the thirties, she always has them on.”

  “How old is your sister?" I ask.

  “Twelve.”

  I glance over at the girl. She can't be older than fourteen. It's hard to tell though. When you're dead, you look older than you are in real life.

  I make my way around the tree again. A few people gather by the plastic partition around the crime scene. There are hikers who have come upon the investigation and there are others who have heard the commotion from below the trail and come up. Occasionally, we ask these people to leave, but it’s not uncommon for the person who had something to do with the death to stick around.

  I approach three deputies standing in a huddle, gossiping.

  “It has to be a suicide,” the bigger one, who had interviewed the dog walker earlier, insists. “Otherwise, she’d be naked and sexually assaulted, but it doesn’t look like her clothes were even removed.”